Outstanding Polish pianist Łukasz Krupiński to perform in Canberra, November 2024

(Photo: Wojciech Grzedzinski, courtesy wyborcza.pl)

by Tony Magee

Renowned Polish pianist Łukasz Krupiński will visit Canberra during November 2024.

Preferring his Westernised first name Lucas when abroad, the thirty-two year old’s concert schedule begins with a performance at the Embassy of Belgium on November 13 at 6.30pm, and The Wesley Music Centre on November 17 at 4pm.

Krupinski is no stranger to Canberra audiences, having previously been engaged as a headliner in two Canberra International Music Festivals, to standing ovations, at the invitation of then-festival artistic director Roland Peelman.

Winning first prize at the 7th San Marino International Piano Competition in 2016 as well as the Audience Award, the Music Critics Award and the Orchestra Award, Krupinski has gone on to win international piano competitions in Hannover, Aachen and Goerlitz.

His United States debut came in 2018, where he performed to critical acclaim in the Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall.

Music lovers around the world are lucky to still have this cherished venue. In 1960, unscrupulous developers made plans to demolish the famous and beloved concert hall in favour of a towering New York skyscraper.

American violinist Isaac Stern led the charge to save Carnegie Hall, with the support of Leonard Bernstein, André Previn and Stephen Sondheim. Their combined artistic weight was formidable and successful.

From Carnegie Hall to Korea, Krupinski performed a special recital to mark the opening of the Winter Olympics in 2018.

Other recent international recitals include engagements at London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Albert Hall in 2021 and Teatro La Fenice in Venice and La Verdi in Milano in 2022.

(Photo: supplied)

His debut album Espressione was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards alongside albums by colleagues Krystian Zimerman and Evgeny Kissin, receiving excellent press reviews in Pizzicato magazine and The Gramophone, and on Radio Luxembourg and Radio France.

Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1992, Krupinski is a graduate of the Frederic Chopin Institute in Warsaw with “Magna cum Laude” distinction, with further post graduate studies at the Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media and the Royal College of Music in London.

International awards include Laureate of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Prize for remarkable artistic accomplishments in Poland, and the National Heritage Scholarship and the Krystian Zimerman Foundation Scholarship.

His piano concerto repertoire includes the Chopin E Minor and F minor, Beethoven’s 3rd and the Rachmaninoff 2nd with orchestras including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic, Chicago Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Americas.

Since 2023, he has been a member of the Penderecki Trio, alongside violinist Leticia Moreno and cellist Claudio Bohorquez.

Krupinski has also been honoured with a Commemorative Medal from the Frederic Chopin University of Music in recognition of his artistic achievements. In 2024, he was invited to join the doctoral programme at that institution.

Lucas Krupinski will depart Canberra on November 26, where a busy concert schedule in Europe and the UK awaits him.

Łukasz Krupiński plays at the Belgium embassy on November 13 at 6.30pm, and 

The Wesley Music Centre on November 17 at 4pm.

2024 Screen Music Awards see major gongs for reality TV composers, Bluey, Monkey Man and more

By Ria Andriani

Wed Oct 30

Bluey composers including Joff Bush awarded Best Music for Children's Programming in the 2024
Screen Music Awards. (Photo: APRA AMCOS: Georgia Ginnivan)

You might not recognise their names, but musical partners Adam Gock and Dinesh Wicks have been responsible for the heart-pumping moments on shows like MasterChef Australia, Married at First Sight, Travel Guides and LEGO Masters.

Last night, they were recognised at the 2024 Screen Music Awards as the most performed composers in Australia and overseas, overtaking Bluey composer Joff Bush.

Gock and Wicks have also won the award for Best Music for Unscripted and Reality Television Series for LEGO Masters, along with co-writers Anthony Ammar, David Bruggemann, Brontë Horder, David Huxtable, Richard LaBrooy, Adam Sofo, Mitch Stewart and Cassie To.

Bluey’s 28-minutes episode, The Sign, which resolved the question of whether the family would move house, won Best Music for Children’s Programming, with composers Joff Bush, Jazz D’Arcy, Daniel O’Brien and Joe Twist receiving the award.

First time winner Darren Lim received the award for Best Opening Title Television Theme for Night Bloomers, an anthology of horror stories from the Korean diaspora.

Taking out Feature Film Score of the Year was Jed Kurzel with music for Monkey Man. Directed by and starring Dev Patel, Kurzel brought the action revenge thriller to life with his music. 

The Best Original Song Composed for the Screen was Carry You from RFDS, composed by Amanda Brown, Damien Lane and David Lehā. The Best Soundtrack Album went to Stefan Gregory for feature film The Rooster.

First Nations director and film producer Rachel Perkins was honoured with Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen Award, presented by singer-songwriter Missy Higgins.

A live orchestra, conducted by Erkki Veltheim, performs during the ceremony. (APRA AMCOS: Georgia Ginnivan)

Higgins, along with the orchestra, performed Edge of Something from the series Total Control during the ceremony, which took place at the Forum in Naarm/Melbourne on October 29, 2024.

Winners and finalists 

Read the full article here to find out all the winners and finalists.

First published at ABC News, October 30, 2024

All Broulee and Mossy by Stuart Magee - Index (People)

Argerich, Barenboim in der Phiharmonie

Photo courtesy Opern & Konzertkritik Berlin

By author Schlatz

A concert with Daniel Barenboim and Martha Argerich.

In the Philharmonie, the conductor and soloist rely on familiar terrain, Beethoven's first piano concerto and Brahms' last symphony.

How Martha Argerich plays the C major concerto: daringly accentuated target notes and prominent suggestions, effervescently carefree scales, serious afterthoughts, charmingly violent shifts in tempo. Nobody does it like that. Their tone is unique: the quiet notes sound full, round, always a little roughened and dark, and carry their content easily into the huge space. The first movement, in which, as is well known, the solo voice is not heard once with the main theme (similar to how the solo in the development does not play any of the themes), remains boyish and clear in Argerich's work, but in places devoid of mystery. And in the past, Barenboim dispensed with the execution on the piano in a more floating, gripping manner.

Photo courtesy Opern & Konzertkritik Berlin

The cadenza in the first movement is the short one with the long final trill that Argerich usually plays, not the long one that Pollini and Brendel always used. The Argentinian admirably keeps the Adagio with its trills and sixty-fourths in a natural flow, shaping the phrasing without any mannerism, and yet the approach is far from uncomfortable classicism. The very gentle tempo is due to the Berlin Philharmonic's heavenly phrasing on the second themes in movements 1 and 3.

The finale is excellent. The drumming right-hand semiquavers on the side theme are a bit blurred. On the second return of the theme, she misses the last chord of the solo right before the tutti, and I think she's clutching her forehead in anger at that moment.

Everything that is slow becomes even slower. The musicians' entrances under Daniel Barenboim are not accurate to a fiftieth of a second; in the coda of the Allegro non troppo one fears briefly. What's up?

The symphony takes such a long breath that contrasts such as subjective emotions and objective (sonata) form cancel each other out for seemingly endless minutes. The lyricism of the slow movement is played out with such stunning intensity (the Bendix-Balgley), and the Allegro giocoso is so urgently dense - the full-bodied pizzicati of the cellos and basses - that you can only get through it with bated breath. In the finale everything fits, and in the 3/2 variations of the trombone and horn passages time stands still.

First published at Opern & Konzertkritik Berlin, October 27, 2024

Translated by Google Translate

Being There movie, starring Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine, directed by Hal Ashby

Publicity still for Being There, 1979. Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine. (Photo courtesy Movie Store)

Being There is a 1979 American satirical comedy-drama film starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas. Directed by Hal Ashby it is based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Jerzy Kosiński and adapted for the screen by Kosiński. Jack Warden, Richard Dysart and Richard Basehart are featured in support.

Plot summary:

In one of his most finely tuned performances, Peter Sellers plays the pure-hearted, childlike simpleton Chance, a gardener who is forced into the wilds of Washington, D.C., when his wealthy guardian dies. 

Shocked to discover that the real world doesn’t respond to the click of his TV remote, Chance stumbles into celebrity after being taken under the wing of a tycoon, Benjamin Rand (Melvyn Douglas, in an Oscar-winning performance), who together with his close friend The President of the United States (Jack Warden), both mistake his protégé’s horticultural mumblings for sagacious pronouncements on life and politics, and whose wife, Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine) targets Chance as the object of her desire. 

She has previously misheard his name Chance the gardener as Chauncey Gardiner on their first meeting.

Adapted from a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, this satire, both deeply melancholy and hilarious, is the culmination of Hal Ashby’s remarkable string of films in the 1970s, and a carefully modulated examination of the ideals, anxieties, and media-fueled delusions that shaped American culture during that decade.

Publicity still for Being There, 1979. Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine. (Photo courtesy Movie Store)

Cast:

Peter Sellers         Chance the gardener (Chauncey Gardiner)

Shirley MacLaine Eve Rand

Melvyn Douglas Benjamin Rand

Jack Warden         President Bobby (President of the United States of America)

Richard Dysart Dr. Robert Allenby

Richard Baseheart Russian Ambassador Vladimir Skrapinov

Ruth Attaway         Louise (Chance’s maid)

Dave Clennon         Thomas Franklin

Fran Brill         Sally Hayes

Credits:

Director         Hal Ashby

Produced by         Andrew Braunsberg

Screenplay by         Jerzy Kosinksi (author of the book upon which the film is based)

Additional Screenplay Robert C. Jones 

Music by         Johnny Mandel, Eric Satie, Eumir Deodato, Richard Strauss

The Music: 

Incidental music is used very sparingly. What little original music is used was composed by Johnny Mandel, and primarily features two recurrent piano themes based on Gnossiennes No. 4 and No. 5 by Erik Satie. The other major pieces of music used are the Eumir Deodato jazz/funk arrangement of the opening fanfare from Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra and Basketball Jones by Cheech and Chong. These pieces respectively accompany the title credits and Chance's first arrival to the Biltmore Estate. Mandel was also assisted by his cousin and fellow composer Miles Goodman with the orchestration of the film.

Brazilian pianist and composer Eumir Deodato smiling. Venice, 1970s 

(Photo by Angelo Deligio / Mondadori Portfolio by Getty Images)

One of the most positively reviewed films of all time, Being There scores a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Melvyn Douglas won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor at the 52nd Academy Awards in 1980 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and Peter Sellers was nominated for Best Actor.

Being There theatrical release poster. (Photo courtesy IMDb)

First published at The Criterion Collection, March 2017. Additional material by site administrator, Tony Magee, October 2024

Albury residents celebrate efforts to save DC-2 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines plane

By Gaye Pattison

ABC Goulburn Murray

Sat 26 Oct

In the early hours of October 24, 1934, a DC-2 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines aeroplane encountered a dangerous storm.

Margaret Atchison remembers standing with her mother and three brothers on the balcony of their Albury home in southern NSW as the drama unfolded.

"We could hear the plane circulating looking for somewhere to land," she said.

Margaret Atchison remembers the rescue role her father had in the Uiver landing. (ABC News: Gaye Pattison)

The plane, known as the Uiver, had been competing in the MacRobertson Centenary Air Race from London to Melbourne.

On board were three passengers and four crew including First Officer Jan Moll and Captain Koene Parmentier.

The plane was running out of fuel and ice was forming on its wings.

Flying close to the Victorian Alps, the situation was grim.

The townsfolk of Albury and surrounding communities staged a rescue, coming together to help land the plane.

The council flashed the city lights on and off in morse code to spell out "Albury" and give the pilot a bearing out of the storms.

Local residents helped free the Uiver after it got stuck in mud during the London to Melbourne Air Race in 1934. 
(Supplied: Albury City)

Radio broadcast integral to rescue

Mrs Atchison's father, local ABC announcer Arthur Newnham, interrupted radio programming.

Mr Newnham called on people with cars to form a makeshift runway at the Albury racecourse.

Mrs Atchison, 94, said it was a broadcast that almost cost him his job.

"My dad went to his ABC studio and got the technician to switch him over to air and dad broadcast to all the people of Albury," she said.

She said he had been in the air force in England and had a lovely voice to listen to.

"You were not supposed to break into the main transmission," she said.

Noel Jackling says the radio studio has since become the Albury Post Office. (ABC News: Gaye Pattison)

Uiver enthusiast Noel Jackling has been chronicling stories such as Mrs Atchison's for years.

Mr Jackling's father, Stan, was a friend of Arthur Newnham's.

"Just before the Uiver reappeared in the clouds and was preparing to land, Arthur phoned Thomas Bearup, the Victorian Manager of the ABC to let him know of the situation," he said.

Bearup had been contacted by race officials who accused the ABC of interfering with their race.

As a result, Bearup berated Arthur for breaking into radio 2CO which was transmitting radio 3AR Melbourne.

Newnham had taken a huge risk in breaking ABC protocol and knew that risk could be the loss of his job.

"Thankfully, he regarded saving an aeroplane and those on board as more important," Mr Jackling said.

Aeronautical history

Mr Jackling said Mrs Atchison could be the last person alive to have witnessed the plane in the sky.

"There were many families who went to the racecourse the next day to watch the plane being pulled from the mud to get back in the race for it to finish second," he said.

Mrs Atchison said she still recalled the eventful night.

"It was an Albury legend and I grew up with that – went through school with that," she said.

"Every Anzac Day there was always something spoken about it."

She said her father didn't talk about it with her family but she knew he and others involved knew what it meant to the people on board from the Netherlands.

"We had lots of mementos, the Dutch government did send various lovely things to all the people who helped," she said.

Treasured souvenirs adorn Mrs Atchison's home. (ABC News: Gaye Pattison)

The Netherlands Ambassador to Australia, Her Excellency Mrs Ardi Stoios-Braken, will launch an English translation of Parmentier's 1935 book at the Uiver DC-2 Restoration Project hangar on Saturday.

Mrs Atchison said it was a time to remember the courage and role everyone played in the great Uiver rescue including her dad, who she said was her hero.

First published at ABC News, October 26, 2024